The official news outlet of the Taliban is spreading the rumor that President Trump has issued an order that Afghan civilians be killed.
“In the recent past, the American President Trump has directed their forces to indiscriminately kill the kith and kin of those Afghans who resist against the American forces,” the terror group claimed. “This behavior is a clear and grave violation of all war and other human rights conventions, agreements, norms and treaties.”
“It was already and recurrently manifested by the Islamic Emirate that the American forces and their trained internal soldiers have been deliberately attacking, killing and injuring civilian people for the last 17 years, and this felony is incessant. But it is regretful that our Mujahidin have been held responsible for most part of these civilian losses and casualties by the international and other human rights organs, and unsubstantiated reports have been regularly published in this regard.”
The Taliban, who have continued a campaign of bombings that have killed civilians and conducted the January attack on the Inter-Continental Hotel Kabul, claimed U.S. policy on trying to “massacre” civilians “establishes how the American occupying forces and their leaders are indifferent about humanity as they regard killing of innocent common people an insignificant issue.”
The Taliban’s Prevention of Civilian Losses and Casualties department said they want to receive “a clarification on a high level” from the U.S. “about their forces who are directed to indiscriminately kill the families of those people who resist against them, including women and children who are definitely civilian people.”
“If these felonies are perpetuated by the American forces in future, all international human rights and other organs should adopt a clear stance against them,” the terror group added.
It’s unclear if the Taliban were resurrecting Trump’s campaign-trail assertion that families of terrorists were fair game. “The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself,” Trump said in 2015. “When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.”
U.S. military activities in Afghanistan, meanwhile, recently have involved steering away from battlefield interactions in an effort to avoid any U.S. casualties while focusing on advising Afghan forces behind the scenes. American air power has also been helping strike Taliban drug labs that rake in cash for the terror group.
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